


when you catch the light there's a flash of wild creatures

by thecanaryfalls



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Power Dynamics, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:16:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecanaryfalls/pseuds/thecanaryfalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a courtship like <i>that</i>, Attolia hardly expected an artless lover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you catch the light there's a flash of wild creatures

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Neko Case's _Wild Creatures_ , off of the album _The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You_.

 

  He had a thief’s touch. He didn’t treat her as if she were breakable — Attolia hadn’t seen that particular strain of patronizing, chivalric care in any man’s eyes since she’d taken her throne — but he was careful, gentle, almost awed. If she could count on Eugenides for anything, she could count on his not being clumsy.

  She should have known that she could also count on him to see right through her. She sighed when he touched her and moaned into his mouth, but after a while he pulled away, eyes puzzled and searching. She gazed back at him for a moment, and closed her eyes off like a gate.

  “ _That’s_ not really the point,” he said, one eyebrow raised.

  She didn’t blush, and after a moment Eugenides drew away from her, moving across the bed until he could stuff a pillow between his back and the wall. Then he propped the stump of his right arm across his knees and waited.

 

 This was not what she had expected from her wedding night. Surely any man, even this man, would take his fill of her body and accept her warm responses. Instead he was looking at her with those eyes that threw her off balance. She could see his mind flickering behind them like a flame. He waited, watching her, as if he had all night.

  “I’m no prude, husband.”

  “I never expected you to be.”

  Annoyance rose, simmering under her skin. “Why not?" She tipped her head slightly. "Have you ever seen me other than cool and controlled? Do I ever quake with maidenly blushes or hide my eyes in modesty? Am I overcome by great poetry?”

  A wry smile crept in, but he dropped his head so that his dark hair fell across his eyes. “I’m not much of a poet.”

  She snorted.

  “No—I saw the look in your eyes when I took your knives.” His face was still obscured, and there was weight beneath his light tone.

  She flushed. “And what did you see then? Fury?”

  “Mmm.”

 

  Attolia waited for his move as she shuffled about in her mind for the words she needed. She loved him, this mad boy, loved him like an earthquake that threatened to shake her foundations apart in the night. Sometimes she was infuriated and sometimes she wanted to laugh into his face with joy. Sometimes she wanted to hurt him, and sometimes she did. But always he was there, set against her like a buttress. She couldn’t slough him off; she couldn’t close her face from him and retreat behind her walls. When he was in a room with her she wasn’t alone, and that terrified and comforted her in measure. She could see the flame behind his eyes. Against _that_ , gentle kisses felt trivial.

 

  “Irene,” he said idly, and stepped off the bed and walked to the table to pour them both wine, “Are you attracted to me?”

  She didn’t feel the need to respond to that, and he evidently didn’t have look at her for a response. As if to himself, he grinned down at the goblets and poured the wine.

  “You’re an arrogant little snake,” she icily told the self-assured line of his back, “And your mother died too late to save us all the grief.”

  Eugenides brought one glass to her, then settled cross-legged on the floor at her knee. Looking up into her eyes, he smiled disarmingly. “You fell in love with me after you’d already agreed to marry me. I won’t count that as anything but luck.”

  “You seem to be ripe with luck,” she said dryly.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “I am. But attraction — that was earlier, wasn’t it?” He peered up at her through his lashes, and he looked so young. She fought the urge to run a hand through his hair. “ _Attraction,_ my love,was something you felt on the back of your neck when you knew I’d been in your rooms in the dead of night. When I stole your knives.” He pushed himself up to his knees, so that he could reach up and lightly run his thumb over her lips as he gazed up at her. He murmured, “I frightened you.”

  She looked down into his bright eyes, and they were bottomless.

  Suddenly he moved, like a miracle, like a god. He tangled his hand in her hair as he went up and over her shoulder, wrenching her head back sharply, hard enough to tug at the roots of her hair. In an instant he was behind her, breathing warm against her ear, and she could feel the bladed edge of his hook against her throat. She hadn’t even seen him lace it on.

  For a long instant they were still. When she could wait no more she shuddered an exhale and opened her eyes, looking up at him as he rose to his knees above her. He was watching her face. A smile flickered across his mouth, so subtle that she almost doubted it. And just like that, at that fleeting glimpse of smugness, fire spread through her blood. She knew he felt the change in the tension of her body.

  “Tell me to stop, My Queen,” he murmured, and leaned back down to her ear. “Tell me that kisses make your eyes this dark.” He pulled the blade a little harder against her throat until she could feel it start to bite against her skin, but she pressed her lips together and sighed through her nose, trusting his touch with a blade.

  After a breath he released her hair, and pulled the curved knife-edge away. He waited to see what she would do, and she decided tolet him wait. She dropped her head and watched the blood-colored wine spreading on the white sheets.

  He had let her see that flicker of triumph in his eyes; he had trusted her to recognize it. She thought about the subtle games he played with her and the less-subtle games he had begun to play with everyone else. She thought of the times she’d seen through his facades because he’d let her in, and of the times he hadn’t been able to keep her out. She thought of how he had made her forget, with his careful hands and his too-gentle kisses, just how terrifying he was. He had made her forget, and then he had sat back to watch as she realized that she had already pulled her own defenses down stone by stone and laid them out before him.

  She tracked the small trickle of blood that ran down her throat and across her clavicle, down, disappearing into her white nightgown. He had cut her a little. If she could count on Eugenides for anything, she could count on his not being clumsy.

 

  After a moment of watching her, he gave a little half-laugh deep in his throat. With his good hand he reached down and took the forgotten cup, and stepped to the floor, moving to refill it. He hadn’t spilled his own wine.

  “I could have you beheaded for that,” she said calmly. The blood was drying on her chest.

  He poured more wine, then took a sip from her glass and tilted his head in agreement. “The Guard wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.”

  “Then you’ve given me power over you.” She pressed her lips together in a thin smile. “Again.”

  “This doesn’t work if I don’t trust you.” He came back to her then, and put the sharp end of his hook under her chin, lifting her face to to his. “Or if you don’t trust me.”

  There was fear in his eyes, a desperate need for affirmation. She frightened him still, in ways no physical violence could match. She looked into the future, and she saw them both so frightened and alive. They would fight and plot and rage and half the time she would still lose, and maybe in that loss she could rest, for a moment, for a breath. On another day, she would relish a victory and he would enjoy a defeat. She thought of the way he still trembled when she stood over him. He had married her in spite of that, or because of it. _If you have met your match, so has he._

  Thank the gods they were through pretending to be shy, gentle lovers. Knives were where they lived, knives in her eyes, knives in place of his hands. That was the truth of them both, and it fit like a ring.

  “Temporary power feels like the very least I owe you,” she said. Her voice was dry and controlled once more, and it was only half a lie. He was very close. She knew her eyes were burning like a wildfire.

  Eugenides smiled into her face, and it was a real smile. It lit his eyes. “I’ve had power over you for years, just as you’ve had power over me. _This_?” He leaned down and kissed her, holding her in place with the point of his blade sharp against her chin. _“This_ is a game.”

 

 


End file.
